Psychology in Society Flashcards
(123 cards)
What is a social dilemma?
- Each decision maker has a course of action that may yield superior outcomes for the self
- But if we all choose this strategy, it’ll all end up worse off than if people cooperated
- Basically where self-interest and collective interests are at odds with each other
What types of social dilemmas are there?
Social traps
Social fences
What is a social trap?
+ for the self
- to the collective
What are social fences?
- for the self
+ to the collective
What does the Rational Self Interest Model state?
That humans should optimise outcomes for the self over the collective.
But this does not account for the whole picture
How are humans ultra-social compared to non-human primates?
- We punish free-riders
- Children apply some form of distributive justice
- We intervene as a third-party in response to norm violations
- Intrinsically motivated to help
What are the key mechanisms of cooperation?
- Reciprocity
- Indirect reciprocity
- Fairness
- Punishment
What is direct reciprocity?
A helps B, so B helps A
What are game theoretical paradigms?
- Interactive games between PPs wwhich bring social dilemmas into the lab
- Usually in the form of economic games
- Allows us to study social decision-making in a controlled way
What is the prisoners dilemma?
- A and B commit a crime and get arrested
- The prosecutors need one of them to turn on their partner so they can charge the other
- A and B have the choices to cooperate and refuse to talk or defect and testify against your co-conspirer
What is the iterated prisoners dilemma?
Repeated rounds of the prisoners dilemma against a simulated other.
What is the tit for tat strategy in the iterated prisoner’s dilemma?
Player starts cooperative and then responds in kind to the other person’s actions
What is indirect reciprocity?
Upstream: A helps B so B helps C
Downstream: A helps B so C helps A
Why do we study fairness and punishment in social decisions?
Fairness norms are a powerful source of social influence
What game do we use to test fairness and punishment?
Ultimatum game
What is the ultimatum game?
- Player A receives an initial endowment and they devide the money as they see fit and offers part to plater B
- B can accept or reject
- If player B rejects, no one gets any money
What emotional responses are found in fairness?
- People perceieve unfair others as less likeable, agreeable and even less attractive than fair others
- Emotionally people respond to unfair others with disgust, anger, and sometimes sadness
What is the public goods game used for?
There are variants used to examine trust, cooperation, and reputation-building in groups
What is the public goods game?
- Everyone gets an endowment
- Everyone puts as many tokens in the pot as they choose
- The pot is multiplied by a factor and then the pot is split up again
What have we found about fairness and punishment?
- Norms for fairness drive behaviour beyond ‘rational self interest’
- Fairness violations elicit powerful emotional and behavioural responses
People will incur a cost to punish others for unfair behaviour, even if they are merely third parties to the behaviour
What have we found about consistent contributors?
- Contributions remained high in groups with high consistent contributors
- CCs ultimately made more money than members of groups without CC
- Addtive effect of status whereby high status CC had a stronger effect
- Motivational dispositions of the group did not maek a difference
What have we found about propagation of cooperation?
- When an individual cooperates with another individual, it tends to influence the second individual in future interactoins
- The original individual’s cooperative influence persists over time and across the social network
What is perspective-taking?
Inferences about others’ mental states
What is empathy?
Inferences about others’ affective states